Art Historians and the Venice Drawing

Carlo Pedretti (L’Almanacco Italiano, pp. 236–242, 1979).

“Leonardo’s studies for Christ Carrying the Cross, of which the only surviving example is now in Venice, undoubtedly led to a series of versions produced by his workshop and therefore with pronounced Lombard features recalling Gianpietrino, Solario and Luini.”

Carlo Pedretti (La Mente di Leonardo, Al tempo della “Battaglia di Anghiari”, contribution by A. Perissa Torrini, 2006).

In La Mente di Leonardo (2006), through the contribution by A. Perissa Torrini, Pedretti refers to another sheet in the Accademia in Venice, which he links to a lost composition by Leonardo showing Christ Carrying the Cross with several figures. He interprets it as the study of a male tormentor placed opposite Christ.

Notice by Pietro C. Marani (1998), Cristo Trasporta la Croce (1500–1524), Rizzi Gian Pietro, called Giampietrino, Galleria Sabauda, Turin.

https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0100351274 (08/24)

“The work is still considered today to be an autograph work by Giampietrino, Leonardo’s Milanese pupil, …; the Christ Carrying the Cross in question is associated with the corpus of works attributed to this painter, a subject of which several versions exist, produced in the Milanese and Venetian Leonardesque school, following the model created by Leonardo and now visible in the drawing preserved in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, which probably led to a highly successful painting by the master, now lost, and to numerous replicas produced by the school.”

(Leonardo & Venice, Bompiani, pp. 344–345, 1992)

“The theme of Christ Carrying the Cross by Leonardo, in relation to the Venice Accademia […] is one of the most difficult problems we face in examining the links between Leonardo and Venetian painting […] nor is it mentioned in any document. […]. There are, however, some derivations from the supposed prototype by Leonardo […]. These works serve only to make plausible the theory of the existence of a much better example […] perhaps even the work of Leonardo himself.”

David A. Brown (Andrea Solario, Electa, Milan, 1987).

“Contrary to what has been claimed, Bellini’s Christ Carrying the Cross has no connection with what Leonardo was experimenting with towards the end of his stay in Milan; this latter composition, in fact, which may have reached the cartoon stage, can be reconstructed on the basis of a metalpoint drawing for the head of Christ in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice…”

Carmen Bambach (Leonardo Master Draftsman, p. 423 ff., 2003).

Venice Head of Christ, Study for a Christ Carrying the Cross: “the idea of a more elaborate composition by Leonardo da Vinci through a cartoon is not excluded, although no document to that effect has been found.”

Carmen Bambach suggests that the Venice Drawing may be dated to 1488.

Kenneth Clark (Leonardo da Vinci, Cambridge at the University Press, p. 106, 1939, 1967, reprinted 2005).

On Giorgione’s Christ Carrying the Cross in San Rocco, Venice: “The Christ Carrying the Cross, in which the imitation of Leonardo’s drawing is evident”; he adds: “this drawing is known to us in its main outlines through the copies made from it by his pupils in Milan, after a cartoon now lost.”

Larry Keith, with Ashok Roy, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, no. 17, Giampietrino, Boltraffio, and the Influence of Leonardo, 1996.

“A silverpoint study by Leonardo of Christ carrying his Cross, now in Venice, is clearly the source for Giampietrino’s composition in the National Gallery. Generally dated between 1497 and 1500, this drawing and other preparatory drawings may have been studies for a painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has been lost or, perhaps no less likely, for a painting executed by a pupil or an associated artist…”

Martin Kemp (Leonardo da Vinci, Paris, Citadelles & Mazenod, 2003, French translation of Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man), and also Oxford Art Online (2024). https://www.oxfordartonline.com

“No artist has ever inspired more copies […]. Work on variations of Leonardo da Vinci’s favourite themes seems to have become a kind of industry in Milan after his departure in 1513 […]. The variants that appear to reflect Leonardo’s own inventions include the themes […] of Christ Carrying the Cross …”

André Chastel (Flammarion, documentation by Ottino della Chiesa, Tout l’œuvre peint de Léonard de Vinci, p. 6, 1968).

“… a dozen works commissioned from the artist and planned by him, of which no one can say whether they were carried out, or even begun […] Christ Carrying the Cross around 1497.”

Ludwig Goldscheider (Leonardo, Paintings and Drawings, Phaidon Press — London, p. 152, 1959, reprinted 1975).

“… It seems possible that Leonardo executed not one but two cartoons for this composition, which are lost and known only through different imitations. In the first cartoon, Christ was turned to the left, as in the drawing […] most of the imitations I know of this version belong to the Venetian school […] Workshop of Giovanni Bellini […] Giorgione […]. In the other, later version, Christ was turned to the right, and this composition was imitated only by the Milanese painters.”